21.10.07

During a question-and-answer session at New York's Carnegie Hall, JK Rowling revealed- Dumbledore was gay.When one student asked: "Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?"Rowling replied: "My truthful answer to you...I always thought of Dumbledore as gay."

She continued: "Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent, but he met someone as brilliant as he was and, rather like Bellatrix, he was very drawn to this brilliant person and horribly, terribly let down by him."

She added: 'Yeah, that's how I always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read-through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying, "I knew a girl once, whose hair..." I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, "Dumbledore's gay!"'